Swenson, May : Nature: Poems Old and New

Literature Annotations

	On-Line Text
Genre	Collection (Poems) (240 pp.)
Keywords	Body Self-Image, Death and Dying, Nature
Summary	Swenson’s poems about the body and death express the essential mystery of human experience and of observing the cycles of the natural world. In "Question" she wonders in metaphor about what will become of the Self after death, "when Body my good / bright dog is dead." In "Death, Great Smoothener" Swenson notices the odd roles that the personified death seems to play. In "Feel Me" the poet ponders the curious last words of her dying father, suspecting a considerable indictment of the living by the dying. In "Death Invited" she details the gruesome ending of a bullfight, with death personified by the bull, dragged from the ring only to be replaced by another: "Here comes trotting, snorting death / let loose again."
Commentary	Swenson’s gift is to observe and catalog accurately while stretching possible meanings to a higher imaginative level. She is therefore both abstract and concrete at once. A vision akin to William Blake’s is mixed with a homely vernacular diction like Robert Frost’s or perhaps Roethke’s, so that even the darker subjects are luminous with Swenson’s unusual or new perspectives.
Publisher	Houghton Mifflin
Edition	1994
Place Published	Boston
Annotated by	Terry, James S.
Date of Entry	02/28/96
Last Revised	09/01/06